


Guilt and Lies

by asparagusmama



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Community:lewis_challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-28
Updated: 2011-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is for a prompt on live journal</p><p>Genre:Fic – Slash - Warning: mentions of past abuse<br/>Characters/Pairing: Hathaway/Lewis<br/>Prompt No. 42: In 4x01 Dead of Winter, we found out that Augustus Mortmaigne molested at least two of the children in residence and the implication was made that he abused them all. Hathaway grew up in the house. While the show never actually said whether the same happened to Hathaway, the last scene between Lewis and Hathaway strongly suggested it ("you're not responsible for what happened here, then or now"). I would love to see them deal with that.</p><p>In regards to slash and an established relationship, I can see Robbie suddenly worrying that past abuse has caused Hathaway to seek out older male figures and freaks out because he's afraid he's a stand in for Augustus, the abuse "made" Hathaway gay, etc. I am also not opposed to this being gen/friendship just as the first part of the prompt. Hathaway angst=love.<br/>Prompter:  maekala</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt and Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maekala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maekala/gifts).



> Lewis and Hathaway and the other characters all belong to ITV

The night before James Hathaway gave evidence in the Zelinksy case Lewis stayed over with him. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it many times before, of course, it was just more usual for James to spend the night with him, leaving after breakfast to get ready for work.

They lay there, awake, James locked in misery, thinking Robbie was asleep. Robbie lay there, pretending to sleep, knowing James didn’t want to talk about it. Robbie remembered his first case involving serious child abuse and murder and his first time, a lot younger and in uniform, back in Newcastle, when he first found a dead child. A lifetime ago but he could still see her face, after all these years. If James didn’t want to talk about it, fine.

James had his back to him, an attitude of tension in his stilled body, his breathing huffy and snuffling, as if he might be crying. Best leave it, Robbie decided. If he wants comfort, he’ll ask for it. He’d learnt over the past year or so that although his sergeant let him, willingly – enthusiastically – inside his body, his mind was an altogether different matter. He hardly ever knew what when on in James’ head, even, sometimes, during sex.

Robbie’s sad thoughts were interrupted suddenly, as James turned around and demanded,

“Fuck me. Now. I know you’re awake.”

Robbie sighed, “James pet, I’m an old man. We’ve an early start tomorrow. Once is enough. I don’t want to hurt you...”

“Yes! Hurt me! Do! Fuck me so hard I can’t sit in court without thinking of you, without remembering. Please.”

Robbie sighed again and reached to the bedside table for lubricant and a condom before pushing James on his back and kissing him deeply...

 

***

He felt bad, being called away to a body when he’d promised James he would wait for him to come out of the courtroom. We’re professionals, he had to remind himself, Hathaway is just my sergeant. Only my sergeant, he repeated to himself. Anything else is hidden, locked away, secret. I can only offer so much support to my subordinate without arousing suspicion.

 

***

 

“...why God created beer,” he said flippantly. But when he turned back to put James in the picture he thought it must have been the wrong thing to say, catching the deepening misery in James’ eyes during some point as he gave the information concerning about dead bodies and accidental shootings. At what point, Lewis couldn’t tell, but as he walked away, concerned, he supposed his flippant remark concerning God to his sergeant – to his lover – was what had caused the hidden distress. God was an ever present thing in his relationship, hovering over his young boyfriend, causing guilt ridden self hatred at the strangest of times, despite James’ constant reassurance that he was okay, he didn’t want to end up like Will and Feadorcha, that he didn’t believe it was the sin he’d been taught. But sometimes he had doubts.

 

***

 

He’d sent James on leave. Concerned for his well-being? Yes. Protecting him from Hooper’s gossip? Of course. Incandescent with jealousy? Probably.

Definitely.

James was gay. What could he be doing with a woman? That woman! An engaged woman!

James made him mad; angry and jealous and yet, at the same time, fiercely protective of the idiot. Yes, idiot, getting involved in some way in the middle of a murder investigation like a...

Like...

Like Morse!

There, he had thought it.

Lewis stomped up the Chase to the Summerhouse, fuming, furious and jealous. He arrived deep in thought, the investigation pushing back into the front of his mind. He was surprised to find Hopkiss.

Hopkiss was an odd man, creepy and bit like someone from another era entirely. Lewis had met butlers before, but never one quite like this one. Hopkiss belonged in a book by Christie or Wodehouse. All the while, as he questioned Hopkiss, Lewis’ eyes raked the photographs, capturing picture after picture of a tall, skinny blond lad. Photo after photo of the awkward, serious and unhappy boy. Of James...

Lewis remembered a few weeks previously, asking a question, what now he couldn’t remember. He remembered James, sitting at the end of his bed, strumming his guitar, Sunday newspapers and the detritus of breakfast scattered in between them as he, Robbie, had sat up in bed with a cup of tea James had brought him before picking up his guitar.

James’ response had been startling, “Yes!” A jangled, angry disharmonious chord struck and an angry scowl. “I learnt piano first. Hated it!” Another angry chord before the guitar was tossed aside on the bed and James gathered crockery aggressively, shoving stuff on the tray and stomping out of the bedroom like an angry little boy, for what possible reason Robbie hadn’t had a clue.

Until now.

Lewis stared out of the Summerhouse at Mortmaigne, fishing. Thinking.

 

***

 

Finally uniform arrived bringing back up, along with two ambulances and the mortuary van. Scene of Crime also had arrived and Innocent was on her way. And the press, damn them!

Hopkiss had now been restrained and arrested and Philip Coleman’s body removed. Selina Mortmaigne was with the paramedics in one ambulance in complete shock. Scarlett Mortmaigne had been charged but all but ignored in all the fuss. SOCOs and uniform had set arch lights over the statue of Juno. A WPC sat with poor little Briony Graham now; Lewis had just taken her statement, had informed her that her mother had never left her, never deserted her, and nor had her father. Hooper had been with him, by his side, in all the chaos and stress, in the absence of Hathaway, who was in the other ambulance.

“I’ll arrest that bastard, shall I?” Hooper asked.

“No. I will,” Lewis snapped. “But first, where’s James?”

Hooper looked at his Inspector with frighteningly understanding eyes. He, too, had come to the same conclusion. “I’ll ask him Sir. Better, maybe, coming from...”

“No. I will. Which ambulance?” Lewis growled.

“The one on the right.”

Hooper walked with him, silent in sympathy and understanding. How much Hooper understood Lewis didn’t want to guess.

The paramedic took one look at Lewis’ furious face and left, murmuring, “Two minutes.” Lewis pulled the door closed with a slam behind him. Hathaway looked up, face set with grim with pain, his jacket and shirt off, a dressing and pressure bandage on his shoulder, oozing blood.

“James...”

James looked away, at the floor.

“I have to ask...”

“No. Don’t do this. Sir. Please.”

“I’m going to arrest him, for Briony and Paul, but before I do, I have to ask...”

“Sir!” James’ head snapped up, his eyes full of pain. “Robbie! Please don’t...” it wasn’t just pain in those pale eyes, it was...? Robbie couldn’t identify it. Fear? Anger? Desperation? Guilt even? All of those in some way?

“I don’t want anything other than a yes or no to a couple of questions,” Robbie said gently.

“Please don’t. It will change everything. I... I...”

Lewis sighed and reached out to touch James’ hair when the paramedic opened the door.

“That’s your two minutes Inspector.”

“Alright!” Lewis snapped. He softened his voice again, “Did he?”

James wouldn’t meet his gaze, looking at the floor, twisting his fingers in his blanket like a small child. “Yes,” he whispered.

“More than once?” Robbie tried to be gentle, not let his anger show.

“Yes.” This time his voice was less than a whisper, barely audible.

“Thank you,” Lewis said and jumped out of the ambulance. As he walked away with Hooper James called after him.

“Lots. From five, maybe six. Until I left when I was 12. All sorts of things.”

Lewis turned and called, “It’ll be fine, James,” before continuing to the house.

“Poor sod,” said Hooper. “Poor fucked up sod. No wonder. Bastard!” he spat out with feeling.

“Hooper. Enough! Go sort SOCO. I need to do this alone.”

“Sir.”

“And Hooper, this goes no further.”

“Sir! As if I would.” Hooper stomped off towards Juno and her geese, offended. He knew where to draw the line when it came to office gossip.

 

***

 

“Between us we make a not bad detective, you and I,” Lewis had said, not having the words, the capacity, to express what he truly felt. Then he’d made a sort of flippant remark, “I’m the brains, of course.”

“Of course,” James had replied, but he said little else, he had just looked at his boss, at his lover, a while, before walking to Lewis’ car.

They had both been up all night; James was injured, but it didn’t stop Innocent wanting him in; there were interviews to conduct and paperwork to complete. Still, she’d not objected to his insistence that he took James home first. She knew the close working relationship that an Inspector had with his (or her) sergeant. What she hopefully, emphatically, did not know was about the out–of-hours relationship that Inspector Lewis had somehow fallen into with his sergeant. It wasn’t like him at all, but somehow, with James, after all that business with Zoe Kenneth, with all the signals James had given, how much James appeared to need him. And James had been so beautiful, if he was honest with himself, and he so lonely.

James had been training to be a priest! He had been so hung up on Catholic guilt and being gay he could barely admit it to himself. But his eyes had always told a different story, one that spoke of being in love, of being needy and needing, of being more than a little in lust for his boss. Or so Lewis had always thought. Now, right then, he began to doubt if James had been gay at all, if James knew what he was or what he wanted. He helped James undress but found it difficult to look at him in case what he was thinking showed in his eyes, but he couldn’t help himself, not to look at James’ lovely body as he undressed him, and not to fall into those pale blue eyes which looked so hurt and tired.

“Stay,” James demanded.

“Can’t love. Innocent wants me in.”

“Please.” James looked up at him from the bed, meekly accepting the painkillers Lewis gave him.

“You sleep. I’ll be back soon.”

“You’ll be interviewing him.” It wasn’t a question.

“Hopkiss?” Robbie deliberately misunderstood. “Of course.”

“Not Paul. Him.”

“James...”

“Do you want my statement?” James spat out.

“I don’t know if we’ll...” Robbie began, a little surprised.

“Now!” James shouted, aggressive and angry.

“James...”

“Phone Innocent. Tell her. Take my statement. Then you can stay with me.”

“I don’t think I can just...” Robbie caught the terrified, childlike look on his lover’s face. “James pet, do you need to talk about it?” he asked gently. “Do you want to tell me?” He sighed and sat down on the end of the bed.

James glared, an angry boy, and swallowed his painkillers before speaking. “Ask me something. I know you want to know.”

Did he? Actually, he didn’t really. Taking Briony’s statement had been hard enough. He cast his mind back to the most recent CSA course he’d been sent on. “Did you remember? Before I told you to go back there a few days ago. I know people can repress memories.” He cast his mind back to him and James, sitting before Briony in her house, noticing she’d been self-harming. The Lodge Farm, the estate manager’s house; it would have been James’ home. And, as well as the obvious nasty scar on James’ chin, he’d noticed the faint pink and white streaks that criss-crossed the man’s wrists. How could he not, he knew every inch of James’ body, had probably kissed every inch.

“Of course I always knew, of course I remembered!” James voice rose high, offended, confused and he glared, angry and confused. “I may choose to forget, to not think about it, but...” he looked down and picked at a loose thread on the quilt cover. “Do you want my statement or not?” He looked up. “Sir!” he spat out, defiantly.

Lewis stared. And sighed, rubbing at his tired eyes. “Jamie pet, what do you mean? Do you want to tell me privately, talk things through, because I’m here for you love, of course I am. Or do you mean a proper statement? Do you want your statement official, do you want that bastard prosecuted for you too?”

James narrowed his eyes, his face a mask of unreadable inscrutability, all anger and hurt vanished behind a blank veil. “Yes,” he said coldly. “And you may as well know, now, he paid my parents off. They knew. Prosecute them too. I don’t care.” His voice was hard, cold, unfeeling.

“I’ll ring Innocent now, I can’t do this alone. It’s procedure to have a woman DC or PC at least for starters.”

 

***

 

Madge took James’ statement with him at the station. Lewis had driven him, having helped him into jeans, trainers and a hoody. Out of his suit he looked so young it broke Lewis’ heart. What on Earth had he been thinking off, taking this vulnerable young man – this boy! – into his bed. James, newly struggling to come to terms with his sexuality and his beliefs after Zoe Kenneth had nearly killed him, fell into his waiting arms. But perhaps, just perhaps, it hadn’t been his sexuality at all? Perhaps poor James just really didn’t know? Lewis worried more and more during the statement...

“And how old were you then?” asked Madge gently.

“Nine. It was just after my ninth birthday. I know that because there had been a big fireworks display on the estate. I... I...” James looked down, picking at the skin on his thumbnail, going pink. “I don’t – didn’t – like the loud bangs. Paul took me up to the Summerhouse and I played the piano. It’s stupid, embarrassing, but I was playing Stock, Aiken and Waterman crap. I was nine!” He defended himself.

Madge and Lewis exchanged looks. James appeared to have wandered off the subject, but since the question had been about anal penetration, neither liked to interrupt.

“Paul was singing. He didn’t stutter when he sang. His Lordship found us. He was angry, because we broke in. Then he sent Paul away. He refused to go, I think he wanted to protect me, and Augustus laughed at his stutter, at his singing, told him he was useless. I know that before me, or maybe at the same time, there had been Paul, but he couldn’t learn the piano so, I suppose, there was no excuse...”

James broke off and put his hands over his face.

“And?” prompted Madge.

“He touched me, held me, told me it was okay to be afraid of fireworks, that it was because I was so sensitive, such a good musician that I was afraid. He said he was glad to find me. He kissed and tried to get me to... to...”

James broke into a sob. Madge got up and squatted down next to him, supportive hand between his shoulder blades.

“He gave me a choice. Something new. I chose... I hated it, the going down on him... I was always sick, I felt like I was choking, I always... I hated it!” James snapped suddenly, sounding for all the world like a defiant child refusing green vegetables.

Hated oral sex, he meant, realised Lewis. Did he? Do you? He thought at James’ bowed head, remembering all too well James’ hot mouth around his cock, the blissed out expression on his face as he took him deep in his throat. Oh God! Is this what James had learnt as a child?

“It hurt,” James whispered, eyes closed, twisting his head away from Madge and then back, twisting his fingers together in patterns and unclenching them again. “He made me lie on my back on the table and put my legs up. He had put his fingers ... there, before, but he... but he...” James let out an anguished sound. “I don’t want to remember!”

Lewis stared, horrified, lost in thought: How many times have I had you like that, on your back, your legs crossed, your deep moans in my ear?

“Excuse me,” Lewis left the interview room, hand over his mouth until he made it to the Gents and threw up.

 

***

 

Innocent had been watching through the mirror and had come to find him, walking into the Gents and alarming PC Hussaine at the urinal, as well as Lewis, at the basins, rinsing his mouth out and splashing cold water on his face.

“Ma’am!” squeaked Hussaine, causing Lewis to look up.

“Ma’am,” he said with stern disapproval.

“I came to check up on you, Lewis. I was worried for you. Carry on Constable.”

Hussaine was now bright red under his brown skin.

“Shall we go, Ma’am?” said Lewis, stalking out of the Gents. Innocent followed and spoke to him in the corridor.

“You should have got Laxton. Or me.”

“He wanted me, Ma’am.”

“And you can’t handle it. I do know how close you are to your sergeant.”

“Do you Ma’am?”

“Oh yes Inspector Lewis, I’ve noticed. Noted and been ignoring it. Now, take James home and take the rest of the day off, and look after him, and yourself too. Mortmaigne can keep. He can bloody stew in the cells overnight. You and I, together, will interview him tomorrow. And we will get as much evidence, find as many victims prepared to testify as possible and we will put that pervert where he belongs for the rest of his natural life.”

Lewis noticed that Innocents knuckles were white; that she was shaking with rage.

 

***

 

Robbie took James home, to his home, but he found it hard to look at him. He helped him into bed, gave him more painkillers, brought him lunch, all the while knowing he should let James go, he was in many ways as guilty as Mortmaigne. He couldn’t help, too, thinking the way he was fussing and clucking over James was no different to how he cared for his own children when they had been sick or injured

 

While James slept he went to his flat and fetched clean clothes, nightwear, wash bag, books and his guitar, returning via M&S for something microwavable that James wouldn’t wrinkle his cute, delicate nose up at.

Cute.

He really had to stop thinking of James, of his sergeant, of a victim in a childhood sexual abuse case, as cute. Or pretty.

Such a pretty little thing, Mortmaigne had said. And he hadn’t been talking about Briony, either, rather a five years old James. He’d been taunting him. He’d noticed the way James looked at him, even if he’d not noticed the way James looked at Mortmaigne, the way he shook all the while he’d been forced to be near him during the investigation. Now, with hindsight, Lewis could see it, he’d just not registered it.

But James was pretty. Not handsome in a more regular, masculine way, but pretty. And so innocent, so untouched, so screwed up by Catholic guilt, lacking any experience...

So he had thought! What had he done? He had authority over James, and God, was so much older. Nearly thirty years older.

That first night, that first time, James had cried in his arms, afterwards. It had been months before they had tried penetrative sex. James had been... nervous? Reluctant? No, he had wanted it, Robbie was sure, he hadn’t just pushed his own wants on the lad. Had he? Scared, yes. James had been so afraid, wrapped in layer after layer of Catholic guilt, knowing every relevant biblical verse in its original Hebrew and Greek, of course; he did have a Cambridge first in theology and a year spent in the Seminary.

Not religious only guilt, though. But also the fear of intimacy and the flashbacks, too, probably, caused by his childhood?

Was James gay? Or was it learnt behaviour? His thoughts were suddenly interrupted.

“Robbie?”

“H’m?”

“Sir. You can look at me. I’m still me.”

“Don’t you bloody fucking call me sir!” Robbie didn’t know where such anger came from. Guilt perhaps? James visibly flinched. He tried to moderate his tone but still snapped, “Not here, not in my bedroom.” They’d eaten supper on trays, helping James, who was wiped out by emotional stress as much as physical injury.

“But you like it,” James said in a sultry voice, “you like it, in bed.”

Robbie forced himself to actually look at James; he was looking at him through his eyelashes, a come-hither look.

“Stop it!” Robbie snapped. “I shouldn’t bloody like it. You are 28 years younger than me, I don’t want to take advantage.”

“You’re not!" James’ voice rose high with anxiety.

“Aren’t I? I’m nearly bloody twice your age and you were so bloody innocent – well, so I thought! But I’m the same age he would have been when he had you and...”

James sat up in bed, knocking the tray and spilling pasta, sauce and salad. He glared as he spat out, “Don’t you dare compare yourself to that bastard! I want it. With you. I want it, you hear me! You make me feel safe. I love you. You stopped me being afraid, of being guilty. You stopped me hating myself. I love you. Love is never wrong, that’s what Will said, that’s what you said!” he slowed down, breathing hard, tears springing in his eyes. “You said you love me. Are you telling me you don’t?”

“Oh James! I do, aye I do pet. That’s why I’m saying I love you too much to use you.”

“You’re not using me. I love you.”

“Yes, James, but is it that sort of love? You’ve had so little experience and you’ve been groomed to...”

“What are you saying? Are you saying I let you... do what we do because he... because he...?”

“Are you sure you’re gay? What was Scarlett about?”

“Nothing happened!” James wailed. “I always did what she told me, she was scary. Habit, I suppose. Nothing happened,” he repeated forcefully.

“Fiona?”

“I was trying to be straight. It didn’t work. I couldn’t even kiss convincingly. She thought I was pathetic and should just relax and date men.”

“And how do you know it didn’t work wasn’t because of what happened making anything... um, physical, difficult, eh?”

“I’ve never noticed a problem kissing you,” James said dryly.

Robbie conceded, to himself, that was a point; their kisses had never been anything less than genuine passion. “I just feel... responsible. Guilty,” he said helplessly.

“Why?” James asked.

“I’m so much older than you. We do... what you described in your statement. You said you hated it.”

“Not with you, as a child, Robbie. I was a child. With you... I thought I couldn’t. it was so easy to just believe the counsellor at the Catholic chaplaincy, the priests, my confessor...”

“What? Believe what?”

“That it was a blessing. That it would be easy to be celibate.”

“They said that? That’s crap!”

“And it’s crap to say I’m with you because of Mortmaigne. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?

“James, pet...”

“What do you want me to say to convince you? Ever since my first wet dream when I was a teenager, my first completely embarrassing hard on, first wank; it has all been about other boys, about male pop stars and film stars. Before puberty, even, I was having crushes on men on TV. I’ve always been gay, always,” he emphasised. “I would have been whatever happened, I’m sure, and maybe they were right all along because if I hadn’t been so terrified by intimacy, convinced it would all hurt and make me sick, I’d have been a sinner long before now.”

“Is that what we are, James?”

“What?”

“Sinful. Is that what you think we have?”

“And what do you think we have, Robbie? Why do you look so guilty? Why did you run out of the interview room? Why do you look at me as if you are so sorry?”

“I am sorry, pet, so sorry.”

“For what? What happened when I was a child isn’t your fault. Is it?”

“For pushing you in to... For seducing you, for Pete’s sake! I’m nearly thirty years older than you and your superior officer and...”

James was now smiling, looking a lot less anxious and tense. “You never seduced me! I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you. You wanting me was like all my Christmases and birthdays come at once, you stupid man. Honestly Sir, you are being...”

James was silenced with a kiss.

“Promise me two things,” Robbie said after they finally broke apart.

“What?”

“That you really are gay and want me, it’s not some form of conditioning or...”

“How can I know what made me gay? Only God knows that. I love you because of you, not because of the age difference. You, Robert Lewis, are the best thing that has ever happened to me; the best, most brave, caring, gentle, loving man I have ever known. Of course I want you.” He kissed him. “You said two promises?” he said after they pulled apart.

“Promise me James, promise me that you will tell me if you remember, if you have a flashback. Sometimes you turn to stone under me and I always thought it guilt. Tell me pet; just tell me okay? If you need to talk, if you need a hug or not to be touched... I’m always here, whatever you need love. And if we’re, you know...”

“Screwing?” offered James.

“Yeah. That. If you start to feel... I dunno, anything bad, you tell me to stop. Don’t just lie under me, numb, like you have done. Please. I want to help you.”

“You can’t. You can’t help me any more than you do already. You can’t undo it, can you? But I will tell you to stop if I remember, I promise, or if I have bad dreams. And Sir?”

“James?”

“I do need a hug right now.”

Robbie put his arms around James carefully and held him tightly, making sure he didn’t touch the injured shoulder. The trays fell on to the floor as he lay them down, pulling the quilt around James, who was shivering, but never mind. He’d clear up when James was asleep, and on those painkillers, that wouldn’t be too long.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not that happy with this and my posting day is the day after I'm archiving it here now coz I am ill. I have had a total relapse with my ME/CFS so won't be posting for a while here.
> 
> I took on this prompt as a challenge to myself as I can't believe in a Robbie Lewis not sensitive to notice all James' issues, but there you go. I wrote this and it's crap. Challenge failed.


End file.
